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Blood 3 tech idea

Imagine if instead of photographing Kevin Kilstrom's clay models of the enemies and converting them to low-resolution low-bit depth image assets, a 3D scanning technology was used to convert them to 100,000 polygon models complete with color- and shade-accurate texture mapping. Blood would look better than ever, and just as coherent.

The only flaw with this point is that the animations would still be incredibly discrete, which would become far more obvious with models. The nature of sprites or low-poly models helps to mask this. Although this point is more of a technicality, and I assume you're implying the models will be subsequently properly animated. I agree about the art style.

You have provided no evidence for this assertion. Blood's art style is in no way dependent on pixelated graphics. Phredreeke's upscale pack completely destroys your claim.

A work of art is not composed only of artistic choices, the medium also has its implicatures (even that dishonest article admits that). You're failing to see that Blood's art is not a result of artistic choices alone. The size of the sprites, while being a technical limitation of the time, also matter. A limited color palette matters. The fact that we are dealing with sprites in the first place, matters. If you were to make a new enemy, and you were to fit it in with Blood's original art, you'll have to restrain it to certain parameters to make it look like the rest of the enemies. I think you're missing the point here, the 'art style' you're referring to - the game's art bible, art direction, whatever you want to call the visual guidelines for the game - is not what's being discussed, it's the role of the low resolution limitation to emulate how games were back then.

Phredreeke is not trying to achieve a retro look, he is trying to enhance sprite quality, which is opposite from what this shader is trying to do.

Hendricks266, on 03 April 2018 - 12:54 PM, said:

Imagine if instead of photographing Kevin Kilstrom's clay models of the enemies and converting them to low-resolution low-bit depth image assets, a 3D scanning technology was used to convert them to 100,000 polygon models complete with color- and shade-accurate texture mapping. Blood would look better than ever, and just as coherent.

That's your opinion, imo it would not look coherent. The enemy models would be amazingly detailed while all the rest of the game - maps, weapons, decoration, etc. - would be stuck in the 90s.

Hendricks266, on 03 April 2018 - 12:54 PM, said:

If your 3D polygonal models, texture maps, and any other realtime processing done on the scene can already achieve an accurate and convincing "retro" aesthetic, then a shader that pixelates your models is unnecessary. If you use one anyway because you think pixels = retro, you are a poseur.

Nobody said pixels = retro. What I'm arguing is that if you want to create new stuff that looks like the original game, you'll have to limit it to what the game had back then. I agree that there is a degree of pointlessness in that shader because we can just do sprites, thus being faithful to the original, but the potential I saw was in the faster method.

Hendricks266, on 03 April 2018 - 12:54 PM, said:

"Reducing visual complexity" does not require pixelation.

That hand drawn yoshi is a little bit bigger than 20x30 pixels. Again, it's not the art direction..

Hendricks266, on 03 April 2018 - 12:54 PM, said:

Pixels are not the same as voxels. If you want voxels, then convert your models to voxels, or write a shader that quantizes polygons and converts them to cubes (or XY-gridlocked billboarded rectangles if you hate yourself). "Emulating voxels" with this shader would be poseury because they're not the same.

Never said they were. I've never used that poly2vox, if it can convert animations then I concede it's pointless trying to do it with this shader.

You're failing to see that Blood's art is not a result of artistic choices alone. The size of the sprites, while being a technical limitation of the time, also matter. A limited color palette matters. The fact that we are dealing with sprites in the first place, matters.

You're conflating the technical limitations themselves with the effects they have on the art style. Pixelation itself does not matter. The limited ability to express detail in the artwork does. Being limited to exactly 255 color values does not matter; the color ranges used do.

By your reasoning, in order for any new artwork to "look like" Doom, the artist must limit it to these exact colors:

Instead, I contend that any art should draw from something more like this:

Arguing that anything created this way no longer "looks like" Doom is beyond pedantic, and simply wrong.

Lune, on 03 April 2018 - 08:55 PM, said:

If you were to make a new enemy, and you were to fit it in with Blood's original art, you'll have to restrain it to certain parameters to make it look like the rest of the enemies.

If you were to fit it with Blood's original art assets.

Lune, on 03 April 2018 - 08:55 PM, said:

I think you're missing the point here, the 'art style' you're referring to - the game's art bible, art direction, whatever you want to call the visual guidelines for the game - is not what's being discussed, it's the role of the low resolution limitation to emulate how games were back then.

The low resolution does not dictate the perception of the game world. You say the shader can be used to emulate games, but the word you're looking for is imitate, and the result is something that is conflicts with both assets and style, making it poseury in such a context.

Lune, on 03 April 2018 - 08:55 PM, said:

Phredreeke is not trying to achieve a retro look, he is trying to enhance sprite quality, which is opposite from what this shader is trying to do.

That's not what I'm saying. I'm saying that his pack still "looks like" Blood, despite not being limited to small image sizes.

Lune, on 03 April 2018 - 08:55 PM, said:

That's your opinion, imo it would not look coherent. The enemy models would be amazingly detailed while all the rest of the game - maps, weapons, decoration, etc. - would be stuck in the 90s.

Once again, assets vs. style. It would look like an incomplete remaster, but it would still feel like Blood. Additionally, if you ran the game at 320x200, would it look that different? Keep in mind that such a low screen resolution was fully supported, and it does not lend itself to picking out pixelation among assets.

Lune, on 03 April 2018 - 08:55 PM, said:

Nobody said pixels = retro. What I'm arguing is that if you want to create new stuff that looks like the original game, you'll have to limit it to what the game had back then.

You should further clarify what you are arguing. If you want to create new stuff to use alongside the existing assets, for example in a mod, then this shader will never look consistent with what is already there. If you want to create an entirely new game world, then you are no longer restricted to the limitations of the original assets, and you can focus on style. If you invoke the shader because you want to resemble the original assets more closely, you are a poseur, because it cannot achieve such a thing.

I would not cared too much until he really released something and it's not just poor demo.
(Especifically when there is other mod named Blood : Source also never happens too, just like many of dead "Blood on other modern engine" mods )